12.2.09

Pet Peave

Over the last couple of years a lot of restaurants and microwave-food companies have started selling toasted sandwiches which they called "paninis" or worse, "panini sandwiches."

Random fact of the day: panino is the Italian word for sandwich. Panini is the plural form for sandwich.

Therefore "panini sandwiches" means "sandwiches sandwiches."

Why does this bother me? (I'm sure this happens with other foreign foods, but I only have a working understanding of spanish and italian.)

It's just stupid.

The Italian word for pizza is "pizza," its plural is pizze. You don't see Domino's advertising for "Pizzes," do you? No, because pizze was properly anglicized into "pizzas." If you want to anglicize panini, it should be "paninos."